Murphy's Circle

If it can, it will

The Mask of Winters

The Mask of Winters saw you coming... he just didn't do anything because he wanted to see how it would play out

Description:

The Mask of Winters is the most active and enigmatic of the Deathlords. He led the siege and eventually capture of Thorns, and is playing a very intricate and intriguing game of Gateway with pretty much every power in Creation. He is currently one leg of a tense three-way standoff between his own forces, the Seventh Legion, and the Icewalkers. He is also playing as much as he can to foul the plans of the Green Sun Princes, since he wants all of Creation for his own domain; not theirs.

Knowing that the Green Suns had several pieces on the move, and not wanting Lookshy and the Bull to gain stronger diplomatic ties, he intercepted Lookshy’s diplomatic mission to the Bull. He handily crushed a Sworn Brotherhood of Lookshy’s Immaculates before he teleported close to the Bull’s city. He appeared at the head of a table of bleached bone, having an animated conversation over tea with the skeletons of the Immacualates. He waved cheerily when the Circle reached him, inviting them to join him. The Circle wisely declined his offer of food and drink, and listened as the Deathlord gave them the most valuable piece of information in Creation – the location of the Scarlet Empress. He followed that up with a cryptic message:

“She runs towards war in a wedding gown. She risks the world to slay her kin. Long has it been said that the legions would follow the empress to hell and back. As of right now, the old saying is half true. Secrecy has been her watchword, for only those who know can knowingly intervene. Yet no plan is foolproof, for the ingenuity of fools is truly without bounds. it is not from her conspirators that her danger lies, but from the one who is kept in darkness that he may ever speak without falsehood in his mind”

With his message delivered, he closed by giving the Circle a datum on Lisara before he teleported out and returned to Thorns. (Session Five)

Seeing that the Bull had taken massive strides forward for the Icewalkers by taking Denandsor, he decided that he had to do something about that. He sent a full Circle of Deathknights to Denandsor on a diplomatic mission. He apparently left them orders to make a scene if they were rebuffed, since when Hugo and Aunn told his envoy to take a hike, one of them used a charm that incited Hugo to attack. Hugo’s attack resulted in nearly a dozen Celestial Exalts in a no-holds-barred battle for the first time in nearly a thousand years. His reaction to the loss of five of his Deathknights, the very powerful Essence explosive Geralt sent at Thorns, and the Solar-Circle Sorcery Callas sent directly into the Labyrinth, remains to be seen (Sessions Ten and Eleven)

It was only a few days later when his reaction seemingly became clear: a massive army of undead, deathknights, and bonestriders marching on Denandsor backed up by the undead behemoth-fortress Juggernaut. But on a whim the group sent him a message in an attempt to talk things out, only to receive the reply “I am going to destroy you and anything that gets between us.”

Knowing that the Mask cannot directly interfere with the Yozis despite wanting to, and rembering his history of using them to do the interfering instead, the group made a risky call: that the Mask was going to use getting revenge as a prelude to following them into Malfeas to foul up the Ebon Dragon’s plans. All they had to do was lead the horse to water by heading into Malfeas before the Mask reached Denandsor in one week. And so the group rushed to gather their allies, mindful of two things: that the Mask had pointedly forced their hand by giving them a deadline, and that there was no of knowing if the Mask would actually do what he had hinted at. (Session Twelve)